Last Seen Tethered
by shahanshah
Summary: Homura had never been somebody to lie to herself, which was why she wondered how she had managed to delude herself into thinking that a world without Madoka could ever be construed as some sort of happy ending.
1. Chapter 1

LAST SEEN TETHERED

-x-

Homura traced the swinging of the pendulum—her pendulum, because she'd decided to erect the thing one last time in the center of her apartment's living room—with her eyes. There were a dozen actions that had been carved into her mind by time's unremitting force. This was one of them, and Homura was all right with keeping the pendulum up, but there were still some things she realized that she _didn't _want to do anymore. She didn't want to place her soul gem on her living room table and watch as grief seeds drained corruption out of it, she didn't want to break into JSDF bases to steal bombs and rifles, and she didn't want to speak the words "health coordinator" ever again.

Something was grossly unfair, Homura thought. She didn't know exactly what.

Poets could pontificate on how _April was the cruelest month, breeding roses out of the dead land, _but she knew that April was the cruelest month because it was the month when everyone died.

_They're not roses, they're lilacs._

Kyouko's reaction hadn't affected her much. It had been routine, and while Miki Sayaka's death was regrettable…

Homura bit down hard on her lower lip, almost hard enough to break the fragile skin. Before Madoka there had been dozens of things that would make her cry, like serial dramas, romantic manga, being rejected by everyone she had ever known except for one girl with short pink hair, a cheerful voice and an understanding smile—

And _after _Madoka she was the only thing that could make her cry. To shed tears for anything else seemed like a betrayal. But now, that wasn't the case.

_Not a monster after all, then._

It would become May in a week. She knew that after Sayaka died, in those timelines when Sakura Kyouko didn't die a meaningless death fighting Sayaka's witch, or when Tomoe Mami had the good fortune both to survive _and _stay sane after the first two weeks of April, the surviving magical girl held a small memorial for Sayaka. The only one Homura had attended had taken place after both of their deaths, so this would be the first time that Homura would remember the legacy of Miki Sayaka in the presence of those who had known her only in the context of Miki Sayaka the _mahou shoujo._

And what was that legacy? Brash, unreliable, generally disappointing—

Homura's jaw clenched, and _now _she tasted blood.

_I will wait one week, _Homura thought, _and then, when May comes, I will get out._

-x—

The city glittered before Homura, as if people had stolen the light from the stars above for their own purposes. Homura had never seen a starry night.

Kyubey had offered her a second wish in this timeline, which was completely unheard of, and something that she knew the old Kyubey would never do. The Incubator had reasoned that, even though Homura was fighting against the heat death of the universe, she had not received, as far as the Incubators could tell, any compensation in the form of a wish. Incubators didn't deal in terms of fair or unfair, but when it came to establishing a consistent system of incentives appealing to rational thinkers—

Homura had declined, obviously, but she thought that if she were to have accepted the offer, she would have wished for a solution to light pollution.

Homura's cell phone buzzed in her pocket. It was a flowery, almost overdone affair. Mami had given it to her in what could have only been a conciliatory gesture. Homura stared at the phone for a few seconds. She was still getting used to having to use the things.

Homura flipped the cell phone open. "This is Akemi."

"Ah, Akemi-san," Mami said. "Forgive me if I'm intruding—"

Homura had asked Kyubey to block attempts at contacting her telepathically for a reason. But now that she could actually hear the hesitation in Mami's voice, she couldn't bring herself to press down on the button to hang up.

"No, it's fine," Homura said. She still had that cold lilt to her voice. It had slipped in at one point, lost amongst a countless number of timelines, but it had still hurt to realize that she had forgotten how to speak in any other way to anybody, even Madoka.

"I was being unnecessarily taciturn."

There was a short pause on Mami's end. "Even though she didn't say it, Kyouko was very grateful that you came."

_Sayaka and I were never very good friends._

"I just called to ask where you were going," Mami said. "You left so abruptly, and…"

Homura turned away from the scene of Mitakihara at night, shining and golden, and instead stared at the cold concrete of the building beneath her. "Forgive me. I think that I will be absent for the next couple days."

There was a short pause on Mami's end. "Yes, and?"

"That's it."

Mami laughed. "Well, you could have just said so."

"I—"

Homura had never considered herself very good with words.

"I didn't think that you would find the information relevant."

Mami made a questioning murmur. "Why not? Kyouko and I will have to cover for you, of course."

Homura shifted, glad that Mami couldn't see her at the moment. She hadn't considered that they were, after all, supposed to be a team. Working independently was so much more convenient.

"I'm sorry."

"No, don't be!" Mami exclaimed. There was something almost pleading in her voice. Homura didn't know why anybody would ever think it appropriate to be desperate for _her _approval. "Akemi-san, we're friends, right?"

It wasn't _at all _appropriate.

"I don't think that someone like you would want to be friends with someone like me."

Homura had known that she would regret the words even before she had opened her mouth to say them, but she had said them anyway. She had spent the last month engaging Tomoe Mami in some vaguely defined half-friendship, and it was infuriating. Homura had given up on that a long time ago, and she never liked to rebuild the bridges that she herself had burned.

It was all the same.

She could feel slightly better about herself now that she was fighting to remember Madoka, something that she had resolved to do the instant she had opened her eyes back in that hospital bed and still felt the imprints of her gentle touch pressed into her brain, but she could still feel _awful _that Madoka was gone, that nobody could remember her, that she was nothing but a ghost.

She was still the type of person that Miki Sayaka would round on with flashing eyes and contempt in her voice. What did _Homura _care about all the people that Madoka had sacrificed herself for? Magical girl or not, most human beings were selfish and delusional.

They had rejected her. Nobody had ever, ever needed her. Except for Madoka.

It wasn't satisfying. There was a space torn straight through the framework of Homura's world, and every regret she had ever held was echoing in that space, rebounding over and over again. It drove her insane.

Mami wasn't saying anything, but she hadn't hung up, and neither had Homura. At least she wasn't acting surprised. That would've been painfully naïve, and probably a lie.

Finally, Mami spoke. "Why don't you want to be friends with anyone?"

"Friendship is a beautiful, wonderful thing. The relationships most people have with each other are insulting imitations."

Sakura Kyouko would have yelled at her for saying something as silly as that. Maybe Miki Sayaka would also.

"There isn't any need for us to be hostile," Homura said. "I don't want that. But I don't think that we can be friends. Co-existence is all you should expect from me."

It took Mami a while to speak again, but when she did, some composure had re-entered her voice. "Who's 'Madoka?'"

"I am not having this discussion."

"We both heard you say her name."

Emotion churned inside Homura, making her want to say "goodbye" and hang up, but that would be embarrassingly petty, not to mention rude.

"I'm sorry, but I don't want to talk about that."

"It only has to be a lie if you want it to be, Akemi-san. The three of us are the same."

"Just because we've lost people close to us?"

"Because fighting on is the only thing we can do to stop the pain."

"I don't—"

Homura cut herself off. Some things, she was never going to say.

"I'm sorry for inconveniencing you with my absence," Homura said. "I'll be back."

"It's not a problem, Akemi-san."

Homura hung up before Mami could say anything else. For a while she just stared at the city below her, watching as miasma pockets bubbled up out of nothingness.

Saving the world had never been a goal in itself. Either way, Mami had said that taking care of the demons wouldn't be a problem. She had never abandoned her duty before, whether that duty had been fighting witches or protecting Madoka, but Homura wasn't trapped in a cycle anymore, and breaking patterns seemed fitting.

Homura unfurled her wings behind her and beat them once, sending her rocketing into the sky. She soared higher until even her body couldn't ignore the cold, and then she chose a random direction and started flying. She didn't stop until she could look up and see the stars again and feel a warm presence somewhere behind her ear.

When Homura came back to Earth, she found herself at the peak of a wooded mountaintop. There were no lights in any direction, and the sounds of insects chirping in the night air filled Homura's ears. She had smelled automobile exhaust and disinfectant for her entire life, but now she could smell nothing but the almost-sweet perfume of the earth.

Homura laid herself on the ground as exhaustion began shutting her brain down. The dirt wasn't very comfortable, but Homura was too tired to care, and she quickly fell asleep.

Clocks across Japan struck midnight, and that year's April 30th slipped into the past.

-x-

When Homura regained consciousness, she found herself standing over her own body.

She was still in the same forest, and her body was still lying in the same position, but when Homura reached a trembling hand down to touch the other body's wrist, she couldn't feel a pulse, even though the body was warm. It was only when Homura saw the leaves frozen in the middle of the air that she realized what was happening.

Homura heard footsteps behind her. She was too afraid to turn around, even though she knew that nothing was, in all likelihood, trying to harm her. It was more the fear of the unknown, because even after years of fighting witches she had never seen anything like this.

But soon, excitement began to build up, stronger than the fear, and Homura turned around.

Maybe it was because she had only lost Madoka a month ago, which made the loss more freshly bitter, that this turnaround seemed so miraculous. Almost _cheating, _but hadn't Madoka been a cheater from the start?

Homura ran forwards and wrapped her arms around Madoka. Maybe holding her would prevent her from leaving ever again. Who knew? Homura was desperate enough to try.

"Homura," Madoka said. The sound of hearing her name said by that voice was like a chorus of angels to Homura. There didn't have to be any meaning behind it.

"I…"

Homura didn't know why Madoka was struggling with her words. It registered on some level that it didn't seem very characteristic for Madoka to do that, but she still hung on.

"You said it yourself, didn't you? You said that there would be a miracle. This is the miracle, isn't it?" Homura pulled away from Madoka and smiled. "Everything's going to be all right, isn't it?"

"I can't cheat too much, Homura. I certainly can't cheat death."

Homura shook her head. "But you're not dead! You're _right here!"_

"The world we came from is dead, and I don't belong here."

"I—but you're here," Homura said. "I don't understand."

Reality began seeping into Homura's world the instant she saw genuine regret in Madoka's eyes. "This space is only temporary, and it can be made only once a year. Once you leave it, you will forget everything that happened inside it."

Homura blinked, and then clenched her fists for an instant before relaxing them. "Oh. Well, that's somewhat cruel."

"I'm sorry for being selfish, Homura. I…I wanted to see you again."

Madoka was still shorter than Homura, not like the radiant Goddess that had shone over Earth a month ago. She bowed her head slightly, letting her pink hair run across her face. After a moment of hesitation, Homura brushed the hair aside. She wanted to see all of Madoka.

"It's not selfish," Homura said. "If anybody's selfish, I am. I wanted you all to myself. I still do."

"If the cycles had continued, then maybe you would have had me," Madoka said.

Homura flicked her eyes away before locking them onto Madoka's face again. "Your family's doing well. I saw Tatsuya a few days ago—"

"I know. I am watching."

"Oh." Homura slowly flipped her hair over her shoulder. "I—you really are a God now, aren't you?"

Her form was human, but if Homura looked closely at her face, light flickered beneath the surface of her skin and shone through. Madoka as a human was nothing more than a mask to hide what both of them knew she really was. Homura could never truly _have _her now.

"That doesn't make us too different, Homura," Madoka said, her voice light and soothing. She spoke like someone who had been changed by the years she carried. Homura didn't know if Madoka could still be called "young" or "old." All she knew was that Madoka almost seemed to be the opposite of "timeless," that time wrapped around Madoka, almost like it had wrapped around her.

Homura shook her head. "We can't be the same," she said. "Just think about all the things that are different between us. You're above me. _Beyond _me. You've always been too far away for me to touch."

The last word shook Homura as she remembered _smell, _not of nature but of a human being, and the soft, cool feel of Madoka's skin. She remembered thinking how pointless it all was when it would be wiped away, and what difference it would make if it would be wiped away in a hundred years or in the next week.

Madoka looked confused. "I'm here, Homura."

"No," Homura said, shaking her head. "Didn't you say it? You're not really _here. _We're stuck in the same trap again, except now it's _me _who'll forget you, like some perverse joke. And the worst part is that this is better than what I had before. What I had before was never seeing you again, not even in death. Between that and this, I wouldn't hesitate, even if I had to take a half-life with you."

Madoka's form shimmered. "I shouldn't have come."

"What? No!"

"I gave you false hope," Madoka said. "Which is probably neither of our faults, but all the same, it's a false hope. I never meant to lie to you, Homura, and I…I want you to know that there is hope beyond this. You're obviously not satisfied."

Homura shook her head. She had thought that it would have been all over when Madoka left, but when she came back, Madoka was still everywhere. She was in Homura's bow and her ribbons and her radiant wings. She whispered in her ear and blew warmth into her. Homura saw her in her mother and her brother, and even _Tatsuya _remembered Madoka, so how could it possibly be the case that Madoka was _gone? _

Everything had been simpler when all Madoka had to do was reassure Homura that her sacrifices had meant something, and that surely they would meet again—when it was a _conclusion. _But Homura knew now that there was no conclusion except death.

"Can you blame me?" Homura asked. "I can't live in this world without you. If you've been watching me, you've seen me for the past month. I can't be friends with Sakura-san or Tomoe-san. I can barely go hunting with them without remembering you and then bursting into tears. I've been weak my entire life."

Madoka's face hardened slightly. "You're not weak, Homura. I gave you your powers for a reason."

"To fight, and to protect this world—I know! But I never did anything for anyone if it wasn't for you. I care about nobody else enough to protect them."

Madoka reached out and touched Homura's hand. She flinched at the contact, because it was an apocalypse ago the last time she had felt Madoka, but then, Homura's fingers leaped forwards and clung onto Madoka's.

"I know we're different, Homura," Madoka said. "But I _am _Hope. If you fight for me, then you fight for a greater good."

Homura took a deep breath. "That makes sense, but I can't associate _hope _with you. It's just…just too bizarre. I've had a month to try and I still haven't gotten any better."

The sternness in Madoka's face melted away as she laughed softly. "It's okay."

Homura squeezed Madoka's hand. "I don't understand why you had to sacrifice yourself, though."

"That was my duty as a magical girl, wasn't it? For my wish, I had to give myself up to service," Madoka said.

"But that's not even true! You know that there have been plenty of magical girls that shirked their duties. In almost all of the timelines, Kyouko didn't care about helping people or spreading hope or anything like that, and she had the most successful survival rate."

Madoka sighed and reached up a hand to stroke Homura's hair. "You sound like a child sometimes."

Homura stiffened. "I've gone through—"

"I know," Madoka said. "But if you live the same month over and over, you never get to see what happens after. I know that you're strong and determined, but you still need to learn."

There was a tiny tremor in Homura's voice as she spoke. It took all of her willpower not to bite her lip, or play with her fingers. She _wasn't _that girl anymore. "I always thought that martyrdom was a child's dream."

Madoka was silent for a few seconds. Then, her voice light and distant, she said, "Yes, I suppose so. I was a child back then, and I saw no use for myself if it wasn't in the service of others."

Madoka's footsteps were silent against the frozen ground as she stepped away from Homura. "You're a contradiction. You know that you've persevered through more than enough to be considered strong, but no matter what, you will think you're weak for not being able to save me. You've tried for so long not to be the girl you once were, but you believe, without even knowing it, that you will never amount to anything but that girl."

There was silence as Homura considered Madoka's words. Madoka had been the only person to have validated that girl, quiet and meek and utterly useless, of no value to anybody, and worst of all, of no value to herself. And life after Madoka meant that there was no more validation for that girl, that nobody would _ever _validate that girl, except right here, right now.

"Why did you decide to become friends with me?"

"Because you seemed like you needed friends."

"So I guess the lesson is that if you're weak, pray that somebody will take pity on you?"

Madoka turned around. "I was a _child_. Every person is valuable in their own right. Even the lowest, most despicable person is human in the end. But I thought that, if I were nice enough to you and showed you enough kindness, I could _make _you believe that you were worth something. I was wrong. Nobody can ever make you believe that but yourself."

Wind blew over Homura's skin, and Madoka's form flickered. Then, everything was still once more, but Homura's heart had already stopped.

"Homura, I need—"

"Wait!" Homura cried out. "I need to know. Did you love me?"

It was a question she couldn't ask for thousands of timelines, because she was talking to a stranger. It was a question she had failed to ask the one time it had mattered most, when she thought that she was reaching a conclusion. Maybe then, if she had asked, she wouldn't have been haunted by Madoka's ghost, and she could have lived the last month in peace.

But it was too late now.

"Well, I remember being fascinated by you, over and over again, because you looked and acted cool, and it seemed elegant and beautiful," Madoka said, giggling. Then, her face grew more serious.

"But that wasn't really who you were," she said. "I was fascinated by an illusion, just like you were probably fascinated with the strong, confidant projection of a magical girl I made for you the first time you met me."

Homura bowed her head. "Then neither of us really loved the other."

"I wouldn't say that," Madoka said. "I didn't always put on the confidant mask—"

_A girl with blood on her hands, kneeling by train tracks, crying onto Homura's shoulder, who knew, whatever Homura said, that they were chasing death—_

"—and you, even after everything, weren't always cold."

"But we still…like you said, one month isn't very long, even if it happens over and over again," Homura said. "We never really knew each other, all this time. So don't say that you shouldn't have come here. Even if this can only happen once a year, we need to start somewhere, don't we?"

Madoka nodded, and then smiled. "All right."

The wind began to blow, and the leaves resumed their downward spiral towards the ground. Homura was having trouble focusing on Madoka's body.

"In the end, I did love you."

-x-

In the morning, there was only the vaguest sense that she had forgotten something, and even that was rapidly eroded by the inevitable ticking of the universe's clock. All she retained was the strong, overwhelming desire to come back to this spot next year.

There was something more abstract than that, though. For most of her life Homura had tethered her sense of being to one girl, fragile and mortal, yet immortal through her own efforts. The negative space marking her loss pervaded throughout Homura's world.

But now it seemed that Homura could bear the loss a little better. She had this sense that she had realized _something, _but she didn't know what. She still couldn't shake the deeply impressed notion that she could be either cold-hearted and unfeeling, or weak and oversensitive. She still felt, on the dominant levels of her mind, worthless and without purpose.

Maybe, though, there was a slight change, and as Homura thought of something she wasn't sure if she was thinking it or if it was someone else who had taught her it:

_It is all right for me to be here. _

-x-

(so yeah, mutlichapter madohomu fanfiction. this is such a great use of my time)

(this is basically what i've been doing instead of working on free sky and it went sooo slowly)

(if anybody's wondering this is compliant with the free sky world not that it really matters)

(if you enjoyed it please leave a review if you didn't enjoy it then i'd still like you to leave a review telling me what i could have done better or maybe not even that you can just complain about something that's still helpful)


	2. Chapter 2

"Want one?"

Homura stared at the apple that Kyouko offered. "You cannot expect to earn anything from me with food."

"Really? Great," Kyouko said, before taking a loud, crunchy bite out of the apple. "Wouldn't want to waste this."

Homura shifted her blank gaze from the apple to Kyouko's face. It was, by now, a practiced move.

"Mami put me up to it. I mean, what the fuck do I care? Now that poor Mami-senpai's off to high school, things have been lonelier. So I hear. And I guess she's too shy to approach you directly, so she left it to me."

"And then why did you agree?"

"We're friends."

Homura nodded. "Oh."

"Fuck, haven't you known us for a year already? This isn't news, is it? We're friends."

Kyouko crossed her arms. As far as Homura was concerned, Kyouko could be as defensive as she wanted. She wouldn't press the issue. Maybe, once upon a time, she would have kept going, more to spite the girl than anything else. Maintaining a distance was easier when the feeling was mutual.

"Look," Kyouko said. "You wanna talk practical? We can do that. It's a pretty well-accepted fact that you, the most talented magical girl in Mitakihara, Japan, and probably the world, have a reputation of unreliability. You know this, right?"

Homura blinked. "I wasn't aware that I had a reputation at all."

It hurt a bit when Kyouko looked at her like she was stupid. Nobody had ever looked at her like that when she was aloof and mysterious. The most she ever got from Kyouko was this hungry, questioning gaze, which Homura eventually came to interpret as Kyouko evaluating her as some sort of curiosity, some valuable commodity. Kyouko's endgame had been for Homura to defeat Walpurgis Night, at which point Kyouko would kick her out of Mitakihara, which was Kyouko's by right/might. Then Kyouko would rule over her infinite expanse of corrupted emptiness, queen of a million tortured, demented souls who would feed off her, neither knowing nor caring about her.

So Homura had never cared about Kyouko's endgame.

"Of course you have a fucking reputation," Kyouko said. "You know the business that Mami's running?"

Homura shrugged. "I'm vaguely aware."

"Well, everybody _knows _the only reason she can basically donate grief cubes to the surrounding prefectures is because we can obtain them at very low risk. Except when you decide to vanish. Mami and I can't keep up."

With a huff, Kyouko turned away from Homura and sat down at the edge of the rooftop, dangling her legs over the edge. It was a rather overdone show of ambivalence, which only served to heighten Homura's guilt. Maybe that had been the purpose?

"I'm sorry."

"You should be."

Kyouko bit into the core of the apple, teeth cutting straight through the bitter interior of the fruit. "We're animals," she said, in between bites. "But we're social animals. Unless you're a psychopath. But you're not a psychopath, right?"

Homura shook her head.

"That's what I thought," Kyouko said. "Unless you're lying to me. But I don't think you're lying to me either. There's plenty of evidence besides your word to suggest that you're not heartless. And I'm not too sure how psychopathy would fuck with your magical girl potential."

Homura's ribbons fluttered in the breeze. "What's your point?"

Kyouko sighed. "You don't have any friends is the point. It won't hurt, will it? All Mami wants is somebody besides foul-mouthed, rude, arrogant me to interact with. Is that so much?"

"You know Mami doesn't really care about that."

"And she doesn't care that you're cold, infuriatingly silent, and almost as arrogant either."

Homura tilted her head. "You're _still _one of the worst diplomats I've ever met."

"I've got a 'cooperation through honesty' deal going on," Kyouko said. "In other words, I don't give a fuck."

"How pleasant."

"We're getting off track here," Kyouko said. "I _always _get off track when I talk to you. With other people, it's fine! I just lay out what I want them to do and what they can expect me to do. That whole civilized relationship thing, you know? But you? I have to delve through layers and layers of bullshit just to talk to you. And I don't even know what the bullshit's made of! For most people it's just insecurity, but for you? God fucking knows!"

"You're getting off track again."

"_Thank you!" _Kyouko shouted. The concrete under her fingers cracked as she tightened her grip. She wasn't idly dangling her legs anymore. If anything, she looked like she was resisting the urge to jump off and run away.

Finally, Kyouko stood up and turned around. "Mami complains about you all the time. I humor her, of course, but I never knew why. And now I do. Always the fifteen-words-or-less responses, like you're trying to offer yourself up as a sacrifice to the ice gods, this goddamn uncaring stare on your face all the time, like everyone you knew could just _drop dead _and you wouldn't give a fuck."

Homura flicked her hair over her shoulder and opened her mouth, but Kyouko kept going. "But the worst part is that I still want to be friends with you. It might be because I'm desperate and selfish."

Kyouko stood there, one figure against the night sky. From below, she and Homura were both invisible, tiny shadows absorbed by the darkness. But to Homura, Kyouko's figure dominated her field of vision. The light from the city below set the maroon red of Kyouko's clothing on fire, and for a moment she was fascinated.

She remembered that Madoka had always believed that Kyouko was a good person.

"Why?" Homura asked.

Kyouko shrugged. "Who knows?"

_Maybe because you're lonely, _Homura thought to herself.

"Wait, no, fuck that," Kyouko said, shaking her head. "I know. I don't need to spell it out, or talk about—talk about how much I regret some things. You know and I know that we're the same."

The silence was filled by the sound of cars gliding across slick black pavement. Tiny droplets of water appeared as if out of nowhere on Homura's arm, making dark spots across the white of her costume.

Maybe it was a sign?

Kyouko sighed. "I've spent too much of my fucking life wondering what it would be like if I could go back in time and fix everything. But I can't. And neither can you. There is one fate, and we've gotta suck it up."

It was beginning to rain in earnest now. Homura knew that if she were to look up, there would be no stars. She would see only the clouds, giant rolling hills, obscured by darkness, from which the river of the heavens poured. Homura was struck by an urge to strip naked and bathe in the waters, right in front of Kyouko, who might not even care. It didn't really matter whether or not Homura suppressed the urge, because she already felt stupid for entertaining it in the first place, and either way she wasn't _actually _going to strip naked. And really, that wasn't a great idea in front of Kyouko. Rain didn't make the black powder inside Kyouko's heart any less volatile, and neither did blood or tears. Homura had _seen _it.

"What is it that Tomoe-san wants from me?"

"Don't call her that to her face. I mean, are you even paying _attention? _Literally everyone calls her Mami-san."

"Answer the question, Kyouko."

Kyouko rolled her eyes. "She didn't want squat. She didn't even ask me to do this up-front. It was just hints and indirect requests and polite bullshit like that, and as you can tell—"

"You don't have the patience."

"Maybe you are paying attention. Anyway, even if she were to actually speak to me directly, I doubt that she had anything specific in mind."

Homura blinked. "So even if I were willing to entertain these attempts at 'bonding' and 'friendship,' nothing would be done."

"Wrong. We're having a picnic. Here, same time, tomorrow. By my decision. Bring something."

Wind whipped at Homura's hair, slapping her ribbons against her face. She toyed with them absent-mindedly as she moved them back into place. "There are probably more convenient places."

"We're _mahou shoujo. _Rooftops are our thing."

Their 'thing'? Homura turned her head from side to side and saw nobody but Kyouko, and when she looked down it was demon fodder clogging the streets from horizon to horizon. Maybe it was their 'thing,' maybe just as bits of their souls were embedded in lifeless rocks, other bits of their souls were part of the concrete and steel capping the city. They were _above _the lid, looking down on the mortals contained below, if only for a few hours before plunging back inside.

"Are you going to be there?" Kyouko asked.

Dozens of answers flitted through Homura's mind—"we'll see," "who knows," "that depends," "I might," but instead she just said, "Yes."

-x-

Kyouko showed up with boxes and boxes of snacks and junk food, tossing them onto the rooftop in a giant pile. There was reluctance in Kyouko's eyes as Homura took from the dragon's hoard to nibble on a bit of Pocky, but she didn't do anything beyond that.

Homura did not really _do _anything besides be a magical girl. Mami cooked and bought cakes and watched movies; Kyouko stole food and loitered and once Homura had seen her beating a _yakuza _member unconscious. For her part, Homura walked through school in a semi-hypnotic daze. When she went to her apartment, she mostly tracked the swinging of her pendulum before going out on patrol. So actually stepping outside and _preparing _for something was uncharted territory. She was Columbus walking through the automatic doors of a convenience store. The harsh white lighting and brightly colored packages were a brave new world. She had brought fruits and ice cream and some microwavable curry—whatever had looked tasty. She was no chef.

Mami's offering was an absurdity.

_Shabu shabu, _Homura thought. She was just staring at the pot of soup in front of them with a raised eyebrow. _This is impressive._

_ Well, _Kyouko answered, _I'm too busy salivating to be impressed. _

Mami fired a bolt of magic under the pot, lighting the fuel underneath the soup and setting it to boil. A few seconds later, a gust of wind blew out the fire. Mami frowned at the skies for confounding her plan to make delicious stew, but before she could re-light the fire Homura had already done it. The wind seemed to die down.

"Thank you, Akemi-san."

Half-formed words floundered on Homura's lips, but the struggle really went deeper than her tongue. Here she was Columbus all over again, but now she realized that the _unknown _was really something scarier than a convenience store. She looked up and saw an infinite expanse of the alien, she looked down and the lights dazzled and blinded her. What did it take to step into the jungle of the future? For a moment, more than anything else, Homura wished that she could see the stars. She wanted to be guided by their light—she _knew _that if she could see the stars, then everything would become clear.

"Hey, Homura," Kyouko said. "You know, Mami, you can call her Homura."

"I wouldn't want to be rude, but if it's all right…"

"Please," Homura said, trying her hardest not to fidget.

"Okay, then," Mami said, smiling.

They talked about _mahou shoujo _politics for a while. Kyouko had outsourced the Mitakihara hunting territory to some other Japanese magical girls for the night, to cover for them. They could do this, of course, because any magical girl would jump at the chance to gain some favor with the Mitakihara group.

But soon enough, they moved on from that, and talked about their wishes, and their hopes. They talked about the past, and Homura bit her lip and cast her gaze downwards. They talked about those who had walked before them, and Homura could feel eyes from the past boring into her skin. They spoke in hushed tones about names long gone, and when Homura looked up to see the same expression of regret on Kyouko and Mami's faces, she thought, _Maybe they are the same. _

-x-

The corpse of this year's April lay rotting at Homura's feet. She could see in its lifeless eyes the memories of that April and every other April before it and could watch as decay ate away at what once was. She sat, with a sense of mounting panic and impotency, as the chains binding her anchor to the sea bed rusted away.

It was an odd, frustrating feeling to wake up and remember something she had once known but had forgotten. Homura had very quickly come to despise all forms of magic that had to do with time or memories, and if nothing else, she had hoped that the new world would do away with that. She didn't know if this Homura was the same Homura that had been awake twenty-four hours ago; she wondered if the two Homuras could be different and yet the _same_, called by the same name, indistinguishable to most observers.

Madoka smiled. "It's been a long time."

Homura nodded slowly. She felt disoriented, and she knew that the vaguely-defined emotion within her was straining to be set loose. It yipped and howled, but Homura needed to regain her balance. "People have been asking about you," she said. She fidgeted with her fingers behind her back.

"Have they?" Madoka asked. Homura looked at Madoka strangely. She had given some thought to the matter, and she was reasonably certain that Madoka was omniscient, what with the "transcend time and space" babble the Incubator had spouted in the timeline when she had ascended.

"Yes," Homura said. "They ask me what death for a magical girl is like. I think that they believe that I must have some way of cheating it. I never asked to be a demigod, Madoka."

"Well, I hope you don't refer to _me _when you answer them."

Homura shook her head. "I don't," she said. "Madoka, how much are you doing this for my benefit?"

"_This _meaning what?"

"_That,_" Homura said. "You know what I mean. Aren't you just pretending that you don't know? You already _know _about everything we're talking about. At this point, isn't it just going through the motions for you?"

Madoka shrugged. "I didn't know what _this _referred to, even though I did know that I would know."

"I have no idea what the difference between _knowing _and _knowing that you will know _is."

"That's good," Madoka said. "That is the human part of you speaking."

"Please try to explain," Homura said.

There was something challenging in the way Homura said that. If the _human _part of her was the part that did not know the difference, then Homura wondered if there were any other parts. She wanted and needed to know, to find any way to bridge the difference between god and human. Madoka was silent, almost reluctant in her contemplation. Homura just stared pleadingly ahead, until the silence became too much to bear.

"I'm sorry—"

"Knowing what I am going to experience, say, and feel is not, contrary to intuition, very limiting. I find it quite freeing. I know that the actions I take are not in spite of what I know. They are, ultimately, those actions that Kaname Madoka takes. We are all defined by ourselves. So, yes, I know exactly what is going to happen to me, but I also know that I do not and never will be very concerned by that ultimate fate. I'm sure that it would be different for a human being, but I am not—"

"—exactly a human being," Homura said.

"Something that we will both, in time, come to accept."

Homura looked into Madoka's eyes and was shocked and slightly horrified to find regret. Doubt began to dominate her thinking processes. There was something undeniably selfish in the way she had framed the situation, that _she _had been the one who had been nailed to a cross (contracted to an Incubator) for the despair of humanity. Somewhere along the line she had forgotten, or maybe she had never internalized, that Madoka had been the one to…

Well, what was death if not this? Or maybe they were empty in their own ways.

"How are Mami and Kyouko?" Madoka asked.

Homura glanced downwards. "I haven't spoken to them very much," she said. There was something almost embarrassing in the way she lied to an omniscient being.

"But you are speaking to them more."

Homura bit her lip. "Yes." Then, the curse was lifted and she could speak again.

"I'm not _supposed _to be friends with them," she said. "They had their business and I had mine. I was a periphery to them. I didn't matter. All Kyouko cared about was Sayaka. She barely had the time to recognize that you or I existed. And Mami? Mami never cared about me. You know that. They would only—they'd do nothing but get in my way. Make it harder for me to do the one thing that I cared about. None of them had any—any sense of how to control themselves. So what am I betraying if I consort with my _enemies?_"

Homura looked into Madoka's golden eyes. She could see herself, tinged yellow, inside them. "_Who _am I betraying?"

"Are they your enemy, Homura?"

"Yes—no, I don't know. I don't know anything. Why do all the conversations that we have devolve into therapy sessions?"

Madoka shrugged. "When we last met, I was in the state of mind of a prepubescent girl who didn't have enough self-preservation to see that many downsides in martyring myself. One of my best friends had just died, and the Incubator had revealed to me the awful truth about a universe that was large and a human race that was insignificant. I…well, I was at peace. I could do that much."

Somehow, these words hurt Homura. She didn't really want to admit them, maybe because the past glittered too much for her to really ascribe it any negative qualities. If she looked forwards and saw only tiny glimmers of hope, and looked back at the past she was tethered to and uncovered its grimy surface, then where was she to go? She could just let the chains do their job.

"Meanwhile, you were on the precipice of despair. You were having an existential crisis over your failure to save me. You left broken and confused. And I left a God, but I assure you, Homura, I doubt, and I am afraid. I am afraid that even though I am a God, it is not enough. I _know _that it is not enough.

Madoka sighed. "I don't think it's too unwarranted that we at least acknowledge these things."

People used the word "bandage" disparagingly when they made analogies concerning problem-solving, but right now, Homura didn't want anything more than to bandage the whole problem up. She wanted to close her eyes and turn away from the ugly, pus-filled, swollen gash on the side of her mind. She didn't want to gaze upon the diseased, infected surface of her psyche. She wanted to hide it and never look at it again.

Homura shook her head. "There isn't any point."

"What do you mean?"

"There's no meaning for me in this world. Sometimes I see tantalizing flashes, but one day everything that reminds me of you is going to fade away before me, and then what? I can't be saved."

"I made it my mission to save all magical girls," Madoka said, placing a hand on Homura's shoulder. "I'm certainly not going to abandon the one most important to me."

Homura bit her lip. Those words served as a reminder that she was bound to the woman in front of her, and that she would never truly be free. It was almost cruel, in a way, and Homura found herself conflicted between resentment and gratification, both of which she hated herself for.

"How will you save me?" Homura asked.

"If I tell you, it certainly defeats the purpose, doesn't it?"

There was nothing more appealing to Homura in that moment than for her to reach back into those deceitful halcyon days and then stop time. To be saved, she would have to spend the rest of eternity with Madoka. All else was shadow. She would spare Mami and Kyouko too, spare them from being made into replacements.

"I can't leave you," Homura whispered. "I can't go back there. Please, keep me with you. I promised that I would fight on for you, but _why?_"

"Would you betray Mami and Kyouko?"

Homura blinked. At first, she imagined that she could do that quite easily, but then something guilty and horrible began settling in her stomach. Slowly, she shook her head.

"Even if they're not me, you would fight for them. Isn't that good enough?"

"I can fight for many things," Homura said. She clenched her fists. "This means nothing."

"You want to deny that you could live for something other than me," Madoka said. "Because living for me is something so central to your being that you cannot imagine an Akemi Homura who lives without doing so."

Homura wanted to cry out, "_You _got to martyr yourself, not _me,_" but there was something so fundamentally twisted and warped in that statement that the very fact that she thought about speaking those words frightened her.

Madoka bowed her head. "I'm sorry."

"No," Homura said. She at least had the resolve to do that. "Do you miss me?"

"Of course."

Homura smiled sadly. "So if both of us miss the other, I'm the only one desperate enough to constantly beg for you to come back."

"That's not true," Madoka said.

Homura looked up. Madoka had a very solemn look on her face, and Homura wondered what it meant when a God thought that something was worthy of that sort of expression.

"If I could, I would cheat Death itself," Madoka said. "When you die, I would use all of my power to save your soul not only from despair but from eternal nothingness, and you would walk with me for as long as I lived. If I could, you would be with me right now. If I could, I would break all the rules for you, to make up for the time I did it for everyone else. But, I cannot.

"I know that you suffer unjustly in this world because of what _I've _done, and that it's my responsibility to save you. But beyond responsibility, I loved you, Homura. And I still do."

"Then if you can't do anything, what hope is there for us?" Homura asked. A strange smile split her face. "You should know."

"What hope is there?" Madoka repeated. "Hope is just a word that people use to describe something complex and abstract. It can mean many different things given the context of the situation. Using most of those meanings, I'd say that we have no hope. But, perhaps…"

"You said that you knew exactly what the future holds," Homura said. "Maybe for us, hope is the idea that we fight on, even if we know, with perfect certainty, exactly what doom awaits us. And that, even if we will only ever meet like this, we can still love each other."

Madoka smiled. "I like fighting on." She leaned forwards, almost as if she wanted to share a secret.

-x-

"You seem distracted, Homura," Mami said.

It was true. It felt like the wires in Homura's brain were crossed, and when she tried to remember what had happened, she could only come up with a blur of warmth and softness and _pink_, certainly something very pleasurable, but nothing that she could define exactly.

Homura surreptitiously rubbed her eyes. "It's nothing," she said, before resuming the hunt.

-x-

(yeah, i'm still alive)

(i dunno if anyone reading this is also reading free sky, but there will be a long stretch of that and a long stretch of not-this for some time)

(as always, reviews are appreciated, regardless of what you have to say. knowing what people think is always cool)


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